Twitter Jitters in China

Users of China’s microblogging services are on edge after a series of unexplained glitches in the last two days disrupted the popular Twitter-like social-networking tools, raising fears of a government crackdown.

Sina Weibo

First, the microblogging service on Web portal Sohu.com became inaccessible over the weekend, before resuming service. Then on Monday a “beta” icon — suggesting testing of some sort — appeared beside the logo for Sina Weibo, Sina.com’s popular service, and also on microblogging services by Netease and Tencent as well. Then, on Tuesday evening, users reported that Netease’s microblogging service was suddenly “under maintenance” and accounts were inaccessible.

Lianhe Zaobao, a Chinese-language newspaper based in Singapore, reported on its website that the Sohu outage was due to censorship compliance issues, causing users to speculate that microblogging, an increasingly popular Internet application, may be in danger of being restricted or shuttered.

A customer service representative at Sohu confirmed that Sohu Weibo was closed between Friday night and Monday, but said it was closed for maintenance rather than a government order.

Liu Qi, vice general manager of Sina’s marketing department, denied that the site’s “beta” version icon had anything to do with government orders or its competitors, and said it is unnecessary for users to worry that the microblogging service will be shut down. Liu said the site has technically been in a trial stage since its launch last August, and is currently planning a relaunch for its first year anniversary.

Still, the fact that several microblogging services have simultaneously displayed “beta” version icons is worrying many users, especially since “site maintenance” has been used in the past by Chinese websites as an excuse to address outages related to private discussions with the government. Adding to concerns, some Twitter users are swapping rumors that microblogging services have been ordered to purge their sites of sensitive content, and are referring to this as the “July 13 Kill Bloggers Incident.”

Last year, Twitter itself was blocked in China, and a similar Chinese service called Fanfou was shut down. Though the two services didn’t become popular among mainstream Internet users, newer microblogging sites started by Sina, Sohu and Netease — which are policed by the websites in accordance with self-censorship rules — began to gain popularity. Sina Weibo, the most popular of the microblogging sites, currently has more than 5 million users.

“Who can tell me what this ‘beta version’ icon means? I’m scared,” wrote one user called kymhenry. Other users wrote open pleas to Sina to not delete their entries. One user under the name Parrot Shi Hang wrote on his microblog that he is exchanging contact information with friends made through the service, and racing to back up his entries and comments.

The concerns come just after the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published a report about the dangers of social networking sites. The report, published July 7, singled out Facebook (also blocked in China) as an example of how social-networking sites can be used as tools for subversion, violate user privacy, and said they are abused by Western intelligence agencies.